Slide fasteners of various sizes and colors are generally marketed in units each consisting, essentially, of two juxtaposed coupling elements on respective carriers (also known as stringer tapes) and a slider engaging these elements for alternately interlinking and separating their coupling heads. The coupling elements may terminate in individual or joint end stops, e.g. a joint bottom stop permanently interconnecting the lower extremities of the coupling elements and separate top stops preventing the detachment of the slider. The terms "top" and "bottom," as used in this connection, identify the starting and stopping positions of the separating stroke of the slider and are not necessarily related to the geometrical orientation of the fastener.
It is known, e.g., from commonly owned U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,340,594, 3,353,233 and 3,353,256, to manufacture an integral series of such fastener units by interlinking two complementary fastener chains secured to respective carrier bands, forming longitudinally spaced windows in these chains between the carrier bands to divide each chain into a row of coupling elements, and introducing a respective slider into each window for engagement with an adjoining pair of coupling elements. The windows serve for separation of the top and bottom stops of successive units; where the coupling elements consist of thermoplastic material, these end stops are advantageously formed by monolithic fusion of terminal parts of the two coupling elements and of a superimposed stiffening foil of like material, as disclosed in the above-identified patents and also in commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 3,482,292.
The conventional method of packaging individual fastener units, obtained by severance of an integral series of such units at the aforementioned windows, involves separate manufacture of envelopes into which these units have to be individually stuffed. Since this procedure is time-consuming and correspondingly adds to the cost of the slide fastener, manufacturers heretofore frequently elected to dispense with such packaging and to suspend the unwrapped fastener units from racks where they would be handled by customers and would thus be subject to soiling.